TOUTS AND TRAINERS

Otago Witness, Issue 2402, 15 March 1900, Page 40

TOUTS AND TRAINERS

"Vigilant" thus discourses on the Wiltshire decision: The Foxhill case, which has

led to the exclusion of certain "watchers" from the pathway across W. T. Robinson's training ground, has somewhat unduly excited some of our readers. Obviously we must not look for any striking uniformity in the law which has been established generation after generation in a mere or less go-as-you-please fashion by this, that, and the other judge — it is quite a mistake to imagine that Parliament makes law, it only makes statutes. But as to this Foxhill case, the training reports will not be interfered with in the slightest degree. That the practice of private touting may lead to grave abuses has been abundantly proved from time- to time. I do not day it did so at Foxhill, knowing no more of the facts than was given at the trial ; but most of us can call to mind instances of stable boys being bribed and ruined, and other similar troubles in connection with the private inquiry business, while to go back some 30 years, was there ever anything much worse than the Kingsclere Discretionary Inveslment swindle of Baily and Walter? More than half of my readers have no recollection of it — indeed, were born after it had been l^ but it furnished a useful object lesson in the evils of private touting, while for the period during which it lasted it drove Sir Joseph Hawley and John Porter to the verge of distraction. Indirectly! it led to poor Dr Shorthouse being imprisoned for allowing an article on Sir Joseph "Scratchawley". to be published in the Spforting'Times. The Baily and Walter . confederacy was always on the watch at Kingsclere, and by a system of relays of hacks, iised to "get the news of any trial or other important event to the nearest telegraph station — Newbury, I think — and so wire up to town before Sir Joseph or anyone connected with the stable could haye a look in- It was on one of these occasions that Sir "Joseph, finding his horse Vagabond a raging hot favourite for the City and Suburban before his own commission reached town, promptly scratched him, and Dr Shorthouse subsequently suffered. It was the fact of their undoubtedly obtaining good information that gave Baily and Walter the credit on which they established the Discretionary Investment business. This was conducted on a gigantic scale, columns of alluring advertisements appearing, not merely in the sporting papers, but in the other dailies also. You were invited «to send them money, £10 being the minimum, to bet with at their discretion, by which plan you would have the advantage of their very latest information; you were guaranteed against loss of capital, and you would "participate in the immense winnings that would inevitably accrue." Even at this distance of time I seem to liave some lurking consciousness of the attraction which those advertisements used to exercise over the mind. No tipster's advertisement that I ever saw could for one moment compare with them in cleverness and plausibility. How much money was raked in will, I suppose, ne\er be 'known — the advertisements alone must have cost thousands, and from the example that came under my own notice I pan imagine that the "takings" were colossal. The example I refer to was at Oxford, where a Christ Church undergraduate, who was the first to send them a stake of £10, received the following week £87 10s, with an account showing how it had been won. IThe fame of this spread like wildfire, and every undergraduate in Oxford who could ' muster £10 promptly dispatched the amount — many sent larger stakes. - Needless to say, there was no more winnings. The •next account showed that by a "wholly unprecedented run of bad luck" the money had been lost, but inasmuch as it was "outside the bounds, of possibility" that this, untoward state of affairs should continue, the losers were exhorted to forthwith renew their stakes, which, as a matter of fact, many of them did. The accounts describing the losses were amusingly ingenious. Everything that had been beaten by a short head had been backed. Something that was left at the post had carried the discretionary money, and so on. I forget exactly how long the game lasted, but it* all originated in 'private touting, which if John Porter had been able to put a stop to then as effectually as Robinson has done now, the public would have been saved a vast sum of money.